Re: handhelds (was:Strict DTD a new twist)

At 19:04 8/01/01 -0500, you wrote:
>At 12:02 PM 1/7/01 -0600, Tamara Abbey wrote:
> >I think these little devices are going to take off (and I own one now too,
> >mainly for the novelty).
And at 19:04 8/01/01 -0500, Fuzzy wrote:
>This is probably way way off topic, but heck, that never stopped me before
>. . .
>
>Why do you think they will take off?

They will definitely take off.  A major problem I see as presently holding 
them back in Australia is pricing structures.  The pricing model needs to 
change from time-based to data-based - at present most telco's are trying 
to use standard mobile phone pricing plans and it's simply too expensive.

Unlike most of the web to date, I don't expect the US to be at the 
forefront of this trend - they are already too locked into other 
systems.  for Europe, Japan, and Australia, the story is quite different.

> >But, we won't see *websites* on them. What will happen is the same thing
> >that has happened all along. These things will evolve.
>
>Please, argue with me if I'm wrong here, but it sounds like the evolving
>needs to happen to the screen on that little gizmo. I see the potential for
>that evolution as extremely limited.

The screens are quite advanced now - not just a couple of characters per 
screen - some of them are quite large.

> >Just as direct marketing went from telephone sales and mailboxes to direct
> >marketing dot com with HTML, we'll have direct marketing on these cell
> >phones and PDAs but with WML.
>
>
>Yes, you are probably right. But if there is ANYTHING this planet needs to
>get together and outlaw - direct marketing in this manner is it. To heck
>with world peace, let's nuke the spam mongers.

Agreed!!

> >And, just as you can not stuff a 6-page flyer onto a browser window, the
> >content will be modified to fit the delivery method.
>
>Not with HTML it won't. It is my opinion that given the nature of the
>graphic/sound/JavaScript enhanced pages of today, that would be a
>completely unreasonable expectation to place on a static HTML file.

No - I think you will see a shift away from "static HTML" to server-side 
XML, converted into HTML (or WML or various modules of XHTML) dependent 
upon the type of browsing device making the request.  The conversion 
process will of course be via XSLT.

> >So, we'll get direct marketing in our mailboxes, on the phone during
> >dinner, on our desktops and on our cell phones/pda's.
>
>Grrrrrrrrrrrr. I'll bet the farm you are right about that. I'd give my left
>. . . well, you know . . . for you to be wrong, but I'm very confident you
>are not.

*ROFL*

> >As far as what to tell clients, then they should understand this is a *new*
> >medium and it will cost them.
> >
>
>That makes sense too. The *problem* (and I'll just bet it is a big one) is
>when they start getting complaints about their pages being broken - when
>they are not. I'm working on the assumption that these devises are going to
>navigate the same way we do with web browsers: URLs.
>
>I can see it now. Have you ever been to one of those framed sites some numb
>nuts built and didn't include no frames content, on a browser that does not
>support frames?

Yes - companies will either have to design two separate sites, a WEB site 
and a WAP site, and maintain them on web and wap servers, or resort to 
XML/XSL as the delivery mechanism.  Personally, I favour the latter system 
as a preferable solution.

Chris

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